Disneyland x 24!

We went to Disneyland 24 times on our annual passes! Twenty-four!  That's just amazing! Especially since the passes are limited, we are blocked out on holidays, weekends and all summer.

Each and every trip to Disneyland was a complete success. We had so much fun! That place is magical, I truly believe in the Disney magic. How can I doubt it when my kids have such magical experiences?  Gracie got to sing with the Dapper Dans, Libby skipped with Merida, Gracie was chosen to be a Padowan in the Jedi Training show - twice!, Libby made Mulan light up with happiness, Gracie played with Pluto, Henry was amazed in Cars Land, Charlie snuggled with Pooh and Ariel, Gracie fired a canon and shot a hole in the clouds.  I could go on and on. They had the times of their lives. Lucky lucky kids! And I'm so lucky to have been a witness and a part of the most magical memories of their childhoods.

Our passes this year were a wonderful gift from "The Grandmas"(my mom and her mom). The girls always knew that the grandmas gave us the tickets and I appreciate that they always gave the grandmas credit for our fun days at Disneyland. It makes me feel like my children are feeling a connection to their grandmas even though we only get to see them in person a couple of times each year.

To end our year of Disneyland, we went three times in our last week. Tuesday, I took all three kids: Gracie, Libby and Charlie. Thursday, I only took Gracie. And on Friday, I took Gracie and Libby.  What a week! We did everything we love the most and found some new things in our last week. It was awesome!

After each day at Disneyland, I suffer from a Disney hangover. I always need a day to recover. It's so odd, but I feel run down and exhausted, and just yucky in general after a day at the Happiest Place on Earth. I really had to take it easy to recover from three days in one week, but it was totally worth the hangover to end our year with so much magic. It was nothing that lots of caffeine and advil couldn't cure. Luckily, the kids needed a day of rest so it was easy enough to declare a lazy day. Nobody argued.

The only thing we didn't do that we would have loved, was to stay late and see the night time shows. It is hard to stay late because, well, it's late.  We never did get to see the World of Color water fountain show, but we did see Goofy's daytime fountain orchestra show, which was amazing with all of the fountains and water dancing. I'm sure the World of Color show is the same thing, with a light show on top. We only saw the fireworks once, but that was the day I lost my purse and validated the fact that I should leave before I'm too tired to remember to keep my purse with me. Goodness! We did well and we only missed a few things by not staying late.

I think we'll go again in another decade or so. When the girls are teenagers and they want to try all the big stuff and reminisce about their childhoods spent on the resort. Plus, by then we should be able to stay in a hotel on the resort and catch the night time shows.

I think if we do everything and see it all, we wouldn't leave anything to anticipate in their teen years. Some of the best moments are those "first" moments. I'm happy to leave some things undone so we can enjoy more firsts some other day.

Right now, we don't want to renew. Aside from the astronomical pass prices, it's just harder to get there and spend a good amount of time at Disneyland. With both girls in school now, we don't have as much time to play. Plus, that level of happiness is exhausting.

Now, I just need to organize all of my photos and figure out how to arrange them in photo books. Chronologically? By land?  A book of character photos? Hmmm...

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Golden Hair

"She did, and then the prince climbed up."  That's how I remember the story, this doesn't exactly happen in the Disney movie. But, the Disney Rapunzel has a beautiful dress!

This dress is adorable, lovely colors and has lots of pretty ribbons and frills.  Plus, it's comfortable and Rapunzel proves that it is perfect for playing hard in this dress. She does all sorts of things while wearing it: swinging from trees, running, jumping, swimming, what doesn't she do in this dress?

She doesn't scratch and itch, so this dress has to be itch free in accordance with the wishes of the princesses in this house. They help with design. Libby likes to make sure she can put on her dress by herself, and take it off independently too. She is a do-it-by-myself kinda girl. Gracie was more interested in making sure lots of just the right ribbons and lace were on the dress. She came shopping with me to choose the appropriate Rapunzel trims.

I've been wanting to make a Rapunzel dress for quite some time, but had other projects. Finally got to it! And it was worth the wait! So pretty! I'm amazed at how well it turned out. I am making five Rapunzel dresses, and have three done. All a little bit different so far.

The first dress, I finished it twice so maybe it counts as two? I love it and I hope the little girl who gets to wear it will love it too. I made it for a sweet little girl named Leah. She's three and had a rough year. I wanted to give her a gift and help keep her smiling. Her mom does a great job of keeping her happy, so she didn't really need my help, but it made me feel good to make a dress for her. I can't wait to see pictures of her wearing her dress!

I made this dress with a peasant style top (a pull-over with an elastic neckline). I opted not to add the neckline lace to avoid the itch-factor. I lined this skirt with an eyelet cotton underskirt with a scalloped hem. It peeks out from under the purple skirt. It looks just like Rapunzel's dress in the movie in that regard. She has a petticoat that peeks out too.

There isn't a waist sash to tie, so there isn't any room to grow in width, but it seems to be a pretty forgiving style so it should fit. I topstitched the ribbon lace-up on the front of the dress so that it wouldn't be a problem with coming undone every few minutes. After I stitched the lacing down, I wasn't sure if I liked that idea or not. It will be better than lacing and relacing it repeatedly though.

I made her dress and finished it before Christmas. It was ready to ship and I laid it on the side table stacked on top of some things, where nobody would notice, and it was handy for me to take to the post office. It wasn't in a box yet, but it was folded and out of the way for the day. I took the girls to Disneyland and when I came home, I found the dress in a wad under the dining table and smudged with ketchup! This is what I get for leaving it out, but I honestly thought it was out of sight and wouldn't be bothered. I live and I learn, every day.

The ketchup was isolated to the outer skirt, the rest of the dress was still in perfect condition as far as I could see, so I took the dress apart and made a new skirt for it. I didn't want to wash it and lose the newness of the fabric. There is always a sheen when it's new that is gone after the first washing. I will laundry test the dresses I made for my girls, but this one was done and I just wanted to finish it again and not have to worry about the detail work on the bodice falling apart in the wash. It can fall apart after Leah wears it to DisneyWorld and spills chocolate ice cream on it, falls down and puts a hole in it, or gets marker on it when she's getting an autograph, after the fun! Just like Libby does. I'm fairly confident that it'll be fine in the laundry on a regular wash and dry, the other dresses I make go through the laundry without incident, but since it is for someone else, I wanted it to be nice, very nice.

You heard me right, the dress is going to Disney World in Florida! Super Fun!

The next dress, I made exactly the same way with the peasant style top. Libby loves this style since there are no buttons nor zippers to challenge her independence. I made the bodice and used the washed skirt from the first dress. It fit perfectly and you cannot tell the difference between the laundered skirt fabric and the new bodice fabric. Score!

I didn't have enough eyelet lace for the underskirt and so I added a white lace trim to the purple skirt for that petticoat look without the lining. It looks pretty good. And now that I study the Disneyland Rapunzel character dress, I think her white petticoat is actually a lace trim sewn to the purple skirt. This time I didn't sew down the lace-up ribbon, I just laced it through some ribbon loops and tied it.

I topstiched all of the bodice ribbons. I want them to stay in place, plus that's what they look like in the movie. If you pause the movie and really take a good look, Rapunzel's sleeve has topstitched pink ribbons, but the front of her dress has eyelets, with grommets, and laced up with pink ribbon. I don't do grommets. I used a ribbon to make little loops and topstitched a pink ribbon over the top to make the edges of the bodice vest look.

I didn't add the lower section of the sleeves because the girls would get too hot and the sheer fabric on the lower sleeve would fail the itch test for sure!

Now that I really look at the bodice and the lace-up detail in the front, I think I put it upside down on the first dress and then sewed it in place that way. OMG! I Did!!! Ugh, why did I do that! It ties at the top of the bodice, not at the waist!  Ooops! Hopefully the three-year old won't notice my big blunder, but she probably will.

Libby loves her dress but it looks a bit short in the bodice. I'll have to remember that my kid is growing and make the bodice longer next time. She now has three princess dresses in this same bodice size and style: Belle, Cinderella and Rapunzel.

Gracie's dress is the third one I made. Her bodice is completely different in that it isn't a peasant style. It has a zipper down the back.  She insisted on having the lace around the neckline, I was hesitant for fear of her complaining that it would itch (the anti-itch factor is very important, can you tell?) so I finished the neckline first and then added the lace just in case she wants me to remove it, I can keep the neckline in tact. Nice to have the option to change your mind, right? If/when she asks me to remove the lace, I can take out one row of stitching and the second row will keep it finished and neat. I won't have to sew it again. Ta-da! Much to my surprise, she really does like the neckline lace. Bonus.

I made her bodice a size 7 since she's been growing so much and the last dress I made was a size 6. Wrong. She grew a lot! And she's grown round the middle much more than she's grown toward the sky. I had to add a piece to each side of the bodice to accommodate her chub. I just guessed at this, there is not technique involved, just took a couple of scraps and made long triangles out of them and stuck them between the bodice front and back all the way up through the armpit. The sleeve hems still meet where they were originally planned. The length of the bodice is just right, at least I didn't mess that up like I did with her holiday dress (she never noticed).

Just like Libby's dress, I added a white lace trim to the purple skirt to simulate the look of a petticoat peeking out from under the dress. I used the leftover eyelet lace from the quilt I made for her for Christmas.  It totally rocks. She isn't complaining about the waistband itching so I guess she's ok with no skirt lining. I did her lace-up the same as Libby's with the loops and the ribbon laced loosely. So far, it's only come untied a few times. I'm debating whether to stitch it in place or not. I'll have to compare notes with Leah's mom and see what she thinks of the topstitched ties.

Gracie's skirt has a different  floral ribbon going down the front of the skirt. Disney's Rapunzel has an embroidered floral motif along the edges of her skirt in the front along her center pleat. I duplicated that look by running two lines of flower ribbon down the front of the skirt where a pleat would be. The first two dresses have a more colorful ribbon of little flowers, this dress has pink flowers. I ran out of the rainbow flower ribbon and the store did not have the same ribbon in stock when I went back for more. That's ok, this ribbon is pretty too and they don't need to be identical in every way.

I think the dresses are authentic enough to the movie costume and yet simplified just enough for little girls who play hard. Gacie and Libby are testing the durability of the dresses as I type this out. For the past two days, they've both covered their dresses in food and juice drippings, a bit of dirt, and twirled a million times. They are thrilled! And, they figured out that if they wear their super poofy skirts underneath that Santa brought them, the dresses look even better. Cool!

I have enough fabric and ribbon to make two more dresses for our favorite local friends. They have spring birthdays and I think these will make very nice birthday gifts. These little girls love to play dress-up just as much as my little girls so I know they will be a big hit. That will be five Rapunzel dresses by the time I'm done! Unless of course, someone else wants one.  Hint!